Breaking the Cycle
by lightness and weight
Summary: All roads lead to Tibet...two teenagers on a quest to learn self-control.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: Dudley and Oz are not my characters.

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_"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty." _~Frank Herbert

_"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become." _~Buddha

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It was Piers who started it. Piers, the lanky pre-teen who used to hold the losers down while Dudley pummeled them; Piers, who had dealt drugs since their fourth year at Smeltings.

Piers, who now aspired to become a priest.

Dudley was a slow learner, and he always had been, no matter what his mother said, but he wasn't stupid, not really. A more accurate description would be...dense...heavy...in more ways than one.

So, at first, when Piers told him, _(I'm tired of breaking things, D. That's all we do...all we've ever done: break things)_, Dudley did not understand. He could acknowledge the truth of the statement; that was easy.

What he had difficulty understanding was why his best friend would bring this up while explaining a decision which, for one thing, entailed _living without sex_ (another concept he grappled with), because Dudley **had** broken things as long as he could remember. Hell, his parents had devoted an entire room for stashing the accumulated ruins of his childhood entertainments!

He did whatever the hell he wanted with his possessions, and they were _**his**_ so _**why the fuck not?**_ And he taught losers that they _were_ losers, because otherwise, how would they _**learn**_? If they broke, they were fucking **meant** to break.

When he had voiced this reasoning, Piers had squeezed his eyes shut and...asked for forgiveness. From God. For Dudley. Then he had opened his eyes, stood up from the floor of Dudley's room, and walked towards the door, where he paused only to murmur, "**I** broke." And then he was gone. They had not spoken since.

_Damn fanatics_, Dudley had thought. _They've corrupted my oldest friend._

He knew just enough of the bible to know it contained a passage calling witches 'an abomination in the sight of the Lord', and that was the main part his parents cared for him to remember, anyway. (The Dursleys attended church, but only on holidays: Petunia did not want risk her family being labelled as zealots _or_ as atheists, because individuals who fell into either category were viewed with distain by the neighborhood.)

And so Dudley lost his only real friend the summer after their last year at Smeltings, but he could not yet comprehend why, or how, it had happened...

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**A/N:** ...this chapter was meant to be three times as long and include Oz, but I got impatient...should I continue?


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: Neither BtVS nor Harry Potter belong to me.

**A/N:** I was in a bad mood when I wrote the first chapter, and Dudley channeled my aggression…I hadn't originally intended to start out with him so hostile, so I got stuck for a bit afterwards, but then it led to this…I'd appreciate feedback on how well (or not), you think the story's working…thanks to everyone who reviewed, by the way. If you hadn't, I probably wouldn't have bothered to find a way to continue the story. Also**, there's** **a** **bit of cursing in this chapter**, which I'm sure is weird and awkward, because in real life cuss words make me cringe…but for some reason I felt inclined to write them.

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_Once again, I'm in trouble with my only friend…_

_Think of all the starving millions_

_Don't talk politics and don't throw stones…_

_Well, of course I'd like to sit around and chat_

_Well, of course I'd like to chew the fat…_

_But someone's listening in_

_Once again, we are hungry for a lynching_

_That's a strange mistake to make_

_You should turn the other cheek_

_Living in a glass house_

~Radiohead, excerpts from "Life in a Glass House"

**March 1999**

On the second day of spring break during his first year of university, Dudley could be found sitting in the park with what was left of his neighborhood gang, smoking a few fags and talking about old times.

In the distance, he saw Patrice Evans, who was roughly a year younger than him and the prettiest girl in Little Whinging—although, in Dudley's opinion, a bit of a cold fish. (He had asked her out several years ago only to be shot down. Rather rudely, he might add.)

But that was a long time ago, when he had been younger and far flabbier. A lot had changed since then, he thought, as he watched her march past the pavilion towards their group.

"Alright, Evans?" Gordon sneered unctuously, likely in a futile attempt to appear charming.

"Would you care if I wasn't, pickle dick?" She shot back provocatively.

"You shut your gob, you greasy-faced cunt," Dennis retaliated for his gobsmacked friend.

"You want to be taken down a few pegs, bitch?" Malcolm growled; he, like Dudley, had a history of being rejected by the girl. "Because we can manage that, I'm sure."

"Guys," Dudley intervened authoritatively. "Shut up."

Gordon and Dennis relaxed immediately. Malcolm scowled and crossed his arms.

There was a flicker of some unidentifiable emotion in Patrice's eyes at the interaction.

"That's right," she said, and there was malice in her voice. "You're in charge, aren't you?"

Dudley shrugged, wondering what this was about. "You might say that."

"Well, then why did you stop them? You've ordered them to beat up kids younger and less mouthy than I am before—you and your _lackeys_ tormented my little brother for _years_, so why not me? Am I not _helpless_ enough for you to _get off on my pain?—_Just show me what you did to him, you fucking _sadists_!"

By the time she finished her rant, she was screaming. All Dudley could think was they were lucky the park was deserted. After a moment of hesitation brought on by shock, Malcolm broke the silence.

"Well, alright then," he smirked. "Hold her arms," he instructed Gordon and Dennis. Apparently he had become the gang's de facto leader in Dudley's absence.

Dudley's response was to punch him in the head, deliberately putting his full weight behind the blow. When Malcolm fell to the ground, unconscious, Gordon and Dennis looked to the champion boxer for leadership once again.

"Go home," he told them.

As they began to obey, Dudley turned back towards the empty-eyed Patrice.

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_Staring at the shadows at the edge of my bed. ~Radiohead_

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Dudley rang the doorbell twice, shifting impatiently as he waited on the porch for someone to answer.

After several long minutes, a disheveled-looking Piers appeared in the entryway.

"Dudley, what are you doing here," he mumbled grumpily. "It's five in the damn morning."

Not to mention that it had been nearly a year since they had spoken, and they had not parted on the best of terms, but at the moment, that detail seemed entirely irrelevant to Dudley. He needed to talk to someone about this; he had not been able to sleep at all last night, because he could not stop thinking about it…

"What do you think about suicide?" he blurted.

Piers stared.

"Um…tell me you're not considering…"

"Don't be a prat," Dudley interrupted, exasperatedly. "Of course _I'm_ not."

Piers was still staring.

Upon reflection, Dudley conceded he had introduced the subject rather untactfully. He forced himself to spit the rest out…he needed to talk about it, but that didn't mean he wanted to. "You haven't heard? About Mark Evans?"

"That kid we used to slap around?" Piers asked, a glint of recognition and remorse in his eyes. "What about him?"

No one had ever accused Piers of being quick on the uptake.

"Yeah," Dudley confirmed solemnly. "…Apparently he had really low self-esteem. He slit his wrists two days ago…his mum found him after he bled out in their upstairs bathroom."

"That's awful."

"Yeah…." Dudley took a modicum of comfort in the fact that Piers actually seemed to care.

Nobody else, with the exception of the Evans family, seemed at all bothered that a fourteen-year-old boy who had grown up in their neighborhood had looked around two days ago and decided that there was nothing here worth living for.

"…His sister blames me. Said I might as well have murdered him…and…lots of other things…"

"_Think you're gallant, don't you, refusing to hit a girl? You as good as murdered my brother, you sack of shit!….Don't touch me. Don't even look at me. You're disgusting…"_

Dudley couldn't get it out of his head, the revulsion in her voice and the accusation in her eyes. After calling him a murderer, she had even suggested that his cousin Harry had been pushed over the edge by his bullying, too, but the Dursleys had covered it up (and that was why Harry went missing without his family filing a missing person's report)…

All of which was ridiculous speculation, of course…but the more Dudley thought about, the more he realized it didn't matter if it had happened or not, because it could have. It already had. A fourteen year old boy was dead, and it was a direct consequence of Dudley's actions…

Consequences. He'd never had to deal with those before…

He felt sick, clammy, cold. The feeling brought back memories of when he was fifteen, and Harry had saved him from those soul-sucking whatevers…he'd wondered, immediately afterward, if the thing had been successful, but Harry assured him it had not. Now, reminded of the parodoxically invasive sensation of hollowness he had experienced four years ago, Dudley pondered what it meant, exactly, to have a soul…

If it was his soul that made him feel this way, he wasn't sure he wanted one…

"I need to talk to someone," he finally admitted aloud. Piers ushered him inside.


End file.
